ANTI-ENGLISH FEELING AMONG THE GERMANS AND ITS CAUSES. It is well known how apt people are, after they have paid a visit to Paris or to the Rhine, to give us their opinion about the French or about the Germans, in general. They may have spoken to a dozen of each nationality, but their conversation with these few individuals was very likely to have been extremely scant and scrappy. Yet for all that they have formed their opinion, and whenever the subject turns up they are always ready to judge millions by the few they have seen. They will declare all Frenchmen to be untrustworthy, all Germans to be rude, or, on the contrary, all Frenchmen to be charming, and all Teutons to be very learned. Their opinion has been formed, and if anybody differs from them they have always one reply: "We have been to Paris," or "We have been to Cologne." The citizens of the United States fare even worse. They are generally judged from what is seen of Americans spending their holidays in England, whether on a personally conducted tour or travelling with families and servants, whether hailing from Boston or from Chicago or elsewhere; and the result of this combined photograph may well be imagined. Yet it is curious to see how lasting these impressions are, and how constantly they come to the surface again in conversations and discussions, though, if pressed a little, the detractors as well as Copyright, 1899 by The Forum Publishing Company. the panegyrists of the typical American have little more "I do not (or I do) like you, Dr. Fell, The reason why I cannot tell.” All this was very different formerly. There was a time, no when every American, man, woman, or child, and everything ican, was hated and ridiculed in England, and there are peop living who can remember this race hatred, which remained aliv generation or two after the American Colonies had gained their pendence. Victories and defeats will always leave behind su pressions; and the tone adopted by English writers, such as C Dickens and many others, was certainly by no means friendly o tering toward the republicans of the United States. Nay, exasperating, inasmuch as ridicule is always more offensive than right hostile criticism; and, unfortunately, it has not been en forgotten even to the present day, at least on the American si But, in all other respects, what a marvellous change has taker during the last generation in the mutual feeling between Englan the United States! The old feuds are almost entirely closed an gotten, and it is felt that the Americans are far more useful to land as bona-fide rivals then as discontented fellow-subjects. An rivalry extends not only to commerce, but to literature, art, sc and social culture in general, in all of which the United State no longer fear any comparison with England. The fact is that land can no longer patronize, but has to respect, the citizens United States; and if she has not quite forgotten that she wa mother and the Americans her children, neither are the Ame unwilling to admit that in political, social, and scientific progres owe much to England, and that the glorious past of Great Bri their own in every sense of the word. No one can fail to perceive this when he takes his American fi to the House of Commons or to the English universities. It is old House of Commons, and Oxford and Cambridge are their ol versities. They are very often much better informed in Englis tory and antiquities, and in what they have to see, to study, a admire, than the sightseers of England. Shakespeare is their Lord Bacon is their old philosopher; and if they criticise some a the present Lord Salisbury, are they not lost in admiration of field, the abode of the Cecils for so many generations? And many American families are there who, after having made a fortune, or at all events, after having secured an independence for themselves and their children, come to England, to the old country, and stay there and feel at home, as if they had been born in it? These Anglo-Americans are outspoken enough, but do we hear from them any scurrilous abuse of things English? They are republicans at heart, no doubt, but do they wish for a better commonwealth than they find in England under the present Queen and Parliament? There And where are English of any distinction received with more generous and hearty hospitality than in the United States? Our best men of science are invited to lecture there; our theatre companies migrate to New York, and American actors fill their places in England. are, no doubt, differences between English and Americans—each party knows them but they are so difficult to define, particularly if they are to be made intelligible to strangers, that we are told of a recent proposal at the Exhibition in Paris to distinguish Americans by a visible badge, so that they might not be mistaken for English, who are not over-popular in the French capital just now. Could they not be recognized without such a badge? We ourselves can easily detect an American by his accent, though there is little of that accent in the Southern States. Froude was praised in America for the excellent English of his lectures; but, as a newspaper remarked, he was sometimes hardly intelligible on account of his strong English accent. Why should not the Americans have their own accent, like the Scotch and the Irish, without in any way being ashamed of it. There was a well-known professor at Oxford who invariably dropped his h's. This is considered a great sin; but "Why should I pronounce all these h's?" said he. "In the county where I was born and bred they did not pronounce an h at the beginning of a word, just as we omit it in 'honor' and 'hour.'"' And have not the English dropped the old h in such words as which, and when, thus confusing which and witch; likewise in why, though always pronouncing and writing the h in how. Such variations, though they startle us at first, may well be tolerated, and they exist more or less in all dialects. But while in all these respects, in language, in science, in art, in political and ethical principles, and in religion also, the people of the United States and of England may be called one people, varying only slightly, like dialect varieties of one and the same language, one can hardly trust one's eyes in reading some of the English and American newspapers, which pour the most villainous abuse on each other, and seem to have one object only that of fanning the emb enmity and war between the two countries. An answer can eas given on the American side. Newspapers, we are told, are very influenced there by Irish writers, and every Irishman in Americ mortal enemy to England. At the present moment, we are told much, nay everything, depends on the Irish vote; and those want to secure Irish voters must rant against old England. As land has committed no very heinous offence against Ireland of her behavior against the Boers of the Transvaal is taken hold of good election cry against her; and the President is given to u stand that, in order to secure the Irish vote, if he does not act send ships and soldiers to the Cape to fight for the Boers-th against England-he must, at all events, insist on England's sub ting her case, and that of the Boers, to arbitration. This, how would be tantamount to a declaration of war against Englan eventuality by no means unwelcome, it would seem, to a certain tion of the Irish Party. When the Boers published their ultima and challenged their suzerain and protecting power to the arbitra of war, what could England do but defend her Colonial Empire? she submitted to arbitration, she would have simply conceded the at issue between herself and Krüger. Krüger would have be ipso facto what he had so long desired, a sovereign among sovere a president among presidents, and probably the richest president i world. Unfortunately, at this very time, the German and the S dinavian votes in the United States, which have often served counterweight to the Irish vote, are influenced by the same susp or hatred against England, so that it is by no means easy for an A ican statesman not to be influenced by these electioneering clan It is said that the most respected, and, in the end, the most i ential, statesmen in America fully understand the great difficulti England. They remember that the North never would have sented to arbitration at the time of the secession of the Sout States, and that the concession of belligerent rights was all that c be granted at the time, and was granted by the North to the S with us, as by England to the Transvaal. But why should ther all this manoeuvring for the good will, nay, for the neutrality, of United States in a quarrel which they may certainly deplore as 1 but which they could not possibly prevent without increasing the rible miseries of war, and inducing a lasting hatred among the gre nations of the world. |